


Dust and Love and Sweat

by samalander



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic, F/M, Mission Fic, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Spies & Secret Agents, Violence, Wall Sex, avengersfest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:40:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mission goes south, leaving Natasha and Clint to reaffirm their partnership.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust and Love and Sweat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aviss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aviss/gifts).



> Thank yous to emmypenny, theoreticalpixy, lar_laughs, and sugar_fey for their alpha/beta/gamma readings and awesome supportiveness and cheerleading. I couldn't have done it without you.
> 
> Title from "Perfect Blue Buildings"  
>  _Well, I got bones beneath my skin, and mister,_  
>  _There's a skeleton in every man's house._  
>  _Beneath the dust, and love, and sweat that hang on everybody_  
>  _There's a dead man tryin' to get out._

The mission has gone to hell by the time Clint and Natasha find themselves back-to-back in the shadow of one of the compound's low buildings. They’re outnumbered and outgunned, close to losing for real, when a stray projectile - a bullet, maybe, she doesn't even know who's firing what at them anymore - carves a neat little tunnel through the meat of Natasha's thigh.

She makes a noise of pain - and a lesser person would be screaming, maybe they'd even fall - but she just exhales a small noise and slams another clip into her glock, concentrating on balancing her new one-legged stance with the kick as she fires.

"You're hit," Clint says, and she grunts in return, her teeth clenched tight. The blood is running down her leg, pooling in her shoe and this one _stings_. She knows that, even with her healing time, she's gonna need a tourniquet sooner rather than later; they'd better wrap this little exercise up before she starts getting sleepy.

"You got a grappling?" she bites out through clenched teeth, and she feels, rather than hears, his affirmative. "I think we should maybe take a break," she says, and fires off another shot, driving a bullet of her own home between the eyes of a man who was aiming at them.

She knows Clint, has the movements of his body mapped in her mind, and she doesn't miss a beat when he fires his bow and wraps an arm around her waist to haul her up the building with him. It's all a little Batman, this kind of escape, being pulled by a slim wire up and out of the danger zone, but sometimes the answer is cut and run, and sometimes the answer is stay and fight, and sometimes the answer is a little Batman.

She lays down cover fire as they ascend - in the few seconds it takes for his arrow to drag them to the roof of the building, she estimates she takes another two men, maybe three, but she knows there are at least eight left - this is hostile territory, this is the cartel's home base. She taps the comm unit in her ear as they land on the roof of the building, swallowing the jolt of pain that throbs up her leg. Clint moves to a defensive position near the edge, gives her space to be weak if she needs to be weak, and she grits out "Coulson, extraction."

She glances at the leg - not her leg, her leg has never been shot, it's just a leg like any other leg she's bandaged - and it's a through and through, no shrapnel in the wound, no impact on the bone, just a neat little worm hole seeping life.

Coulson is in her ear, giving an ETA on the chopper, asking about injuries, and Clint is running low on arrows - he can take out the men they have now, but if any more show up before the five to ten minute extraction windows closes, they're screwed. She pulls her knife from its holster on her belt and uses it to rip the fabric of her sleeve. The blade kisses her arm in the process, a new little river of red to join the one below, but she gets what she needs and she ties the strip of her shirt above the wound in her thigh.

"Not today," she mutters to anyone who might be listening, any visiting angels or devils or _chort_ that might be waiting for her to collapse. She takes a deep breath and gets herself to the edge of the roof by sheer force of will, where she aims and takes out two men, three men, while Clint gets the rest. They still have three to eight minutes before the chopper comes, and she has one clip left and he has three arrows so maybe they'll die today. There are three to eight minutes for her to die, to bleed out, to get shot again, to make him feel useless as another person he loves fades in front of him.

He lays a hand on her thigh, and she lets it anchor her in the moment, anchor her with his heat and his presence and his _self_. Morbidly she imagines him sticking one of his stubborn fingers into her wound, grinding down until she screams, because that's what they would have done to her in the Red Room, that was the punishment for being weak enough to be hurt. He's bleeding, too, a scratch on his face and a bullet graze on his right bicep, which she reaches out to touch, but most of the blood on him isn't his, which is always a positive in their line of work.

"Be still," he says, and while it's not unkind, it's not what she wants from him, either. It's not what she needs because it reeks of concern and tenderness, and she needs to know something different in that moment, needs to know she won't die on a rooftop in Barranquilla, needs to know that even as she's feeling like she might be fading, he's still got the signal, he's still upright.

The minutes pass, sluggish like honey, viscous and slow, and they hear the chopper before they see it, as is the nature of choppers. Eons later, when it drops the rope for them she laughs like it's a joke, because she just doesn't know if she has it in her to climb anymore. She's been climbing mountains and rappelling back down since she was seven, since she became a spy.

He helps her to her feet, and she spares him a rare smile, the kind of look that she thinks reeks of dependence, of _this is how you'll hurt me_ , and he leans in to whisper in her ear.

"We're even for Azerbaijan," he says, and she can just barely hear him over the rush of the rotors, barely gets the words, but she remembers how she saved him there, got his ass back to the evac point with the intel and made sure they could sew most of his toes back on when they got home.

"Azerbaijan," she mutters, and mentally erases it from her plusses column as he helps her find her foothold on the rope, wraps one of his big hands over hers to make sure she doesn't slip, and slides his other arm around her hips so she can feel like she's secure. If he keeps calling them even, she'll never clear her debts.

He takes her gun and fires at the ground, lays down cover as they leave the area, and he only flinches a little when a bullet grazes the back of his hand where it covers hers.

* * *

They stop a few miles away from the compound so the Coulson and the flight crew can get the two spies into the chopper; they’ll be taken out to the carrier group in the Caribbean Sea, where they'll rendezvous with the Quinjet and get back to New York to be debriefed. It's like a dream to her, the process of being put in the helicopter, maybe because she's healing and maybe because she's hurt, she's not totally sure she knows the difference between the two anymore.

Coulson spares each of them a Look as the helicopter takes off again, one of those "you two are lucky you're partners" looks that seems, somehow, to be equal parts love and derision and concern and disapproval, but he doesn't say anything as he checks her tourniquet and grabs the first aid kit to sterilize the area around the hole in her leg.

(It's good, disinfectant, almost as good as the punishments in the red room. She wants it, needs it, it keeps her alive and awake.)

Coulson doesn't say anything when they land, but he bustles them both off the bird as soon as it touches the deck. She leans on Clint for support as they're led down to medical to be patched up.

* * *

Fourteen hours later, they're back in New York and her enhanced metabolism has done its job and the medics have done theirs - there are two shiny pink scars on her leg, one for _in_ and one for _out_ \- but she's got new blood, she's had three hours of sleep, and she's been debriefed. She owes a report, but it will keep until she's ready to write it.

Clint is waiting for her as she exits the SHIELD building, wearing civilian clothes just like she is, leaning casually against a newsstand and reading a tattered old paperback novel she knows he keeps in his locker for times when he needs to pretend to not be anxious about things, times when he has to wait for the answers he already knows.

He doesn't say anything to her, pretends not to be watching her as she walks over, with her uneven, sore-and-healing gait, and plucks the book from his hands.

"Yours," she says, handing him the book back, and she doesn't have to say anymore, he falls into step with her as they walk up to 8th to catch the C, like any normal couple on a - what was it? Thursday? - afternoon, heading to Brooklyn to be whatever they are, but certainly not spies and assassins and snipers. Because no one else in Bed Stuy, she thinks, is quite what they are.

* * *

They tumble through the door of his apartment like they're on fire and they are, on fire and running from the flames and the tips of his fingers burn across her skin, bright trails like shooting stars, hard and sharp like diamonds. She tries to cry out, tries to scream or sigh or make any noise at all besides _yes please more now Clint_ and his mouth covers hers, drinking down her needy sounds like a man dying of thirst.

He kicks the door closed, and he doesn't latch it but she has no illusions about not being safe, knows that Clint's apartments are some of the safest places in New York, if not the world, so she pulls him by the hand down the hall, kicking out of her shoes as she enters the bedroom and he backs her against the wall as they pass through the door, kissing her with bruising force until she bites his lip, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough that he stops.

He pulls back to take in her face, eyes dancing brown-green-gray, a color all his own, and he breathes, the first breath she thinks either of them has taken since they were evacuated, His fingers lace in hers, his forehead comes to rest against hers, a sign of intimacy in anyone else, but for them a sign of weakness.

 _I could have lost you_ he doesn't say. _You almost died._

She would laugh if he did say it, she would ruin the moment, suck the air from his lungs like a vacuum, mock him. _You think it's so easy to kill me? All the armies of the world have tried._

She'd been chased before, attacked and shot and kidnapped, all the horrors the Red Room and the world could think up have been visited upon her at least twice, and still, she's never felt so close to dying or half as alive as she does fighting by his side, riding him to release, sleeping unmolested next to him in bed.

She supposes some people might say she found her other half, but Natasha has always been a full person, and she'll be a full person long after Clint tires of her and moves on. She has found her compliment, she has found her match, she has found the rare man she can call an equal and an ally.

His mouth finds her neck, traces the line of her throat with gentle kisses and scrapes of teeth, and she makes a noise that's somewhere between a moan and a shout, wishing they were younger and stupider, so she could hold his head close and beg him to mark her the way other men have, the way she's used to being wanted. He's always careful how he's rough, never leaves a bruise that will last more than a few hours, never makes a mark she'll have to explain away on a mission, and there are times she wishes he would, wants to beg him to suck an angry red hickey into the junction of her shoulder and her neck, to leave bite marks on her thighs, to carve his name over her heart so she can keep it.

She imagines the people they could be, spies like in the movies, living glamorous lives and fucking on yachts, no one to answer to but their own selves; having their own selves, no one else in their heads to fight with, just skin on skin and salt air.

But reality is his bedroom, his apartment in Bed Stuy, the place they always go for sex because her apartment is _hers_ and she needs that anchor a thousand times more than he does; she needs a place that only revolves around being Natasha. He always knows who Clint is, can have other people in his space. She needs a sanctuary, he wants a home. This is the place where she can spend a weekend lazy, dressed only in his shirts, laughing at American politics and eating his leftovers while he cleans and polishes his bow, fixes his fletchings for the next mission. Her home is where she lets the light fall through the high windows, where she closes her eyes and listens to echoes, where she finds the person she has to be when she's alone.

And now she's pressed flat against the wall of his bedroom, his weight braced on either side of her, his want crashing down on her like an avalanche, like thunder, burying her and blowing her apart at the same time, and there is no room for Natasha, there is only room for _need_.

His hands run up her side, hard and hot and _his_ , in the way the curve of her waist is hers, the way the she wants him and he wants her and they need each other and she reciprocates in her own way, fists a hand in the fabric of his shirt and pulls him close, her mouth finding his in a kiss of dominance and aggression.

They didn't get their target in Colombia, they didn't achieve their mission, and that makes her need more, it makes her angry and hungry and raw, and she'll take what he can give, and a little more still.

(And no matter what he thinks, she didn't almost die because she's pretty sure she can't die. Dying is something humans do and she isn't that anymore, hasn't been that for longer than she knows, but he likes to think she's always almost dying because somewhere deep down, his ego needs to believe that she has to be saved occasionally, just like he does. She knows that he's helped her, but he's never _saved_ her like a damsel in a tower. He never would have recruited her the day they met, both of them colored the sticky sweet red of arterial blood, if she hadn't already decided she would go with him, if she hadn't decided on her own that any man crazy enough to chase her with a bow and arrow was a man she wanted to know.)

She pulls harder on his shirt and it rips, the light fabric rending under her assault, exposing the hair on his chest and the pale skin beneath it, the sharp planes of his abdomen and the memories of battles he keeps there. She smiles, moves back to his mouth as he holds onto her for dear life, and runs her own fingertips over the curve of his hips, back to grab his ass and haul him closer, drawing the bulk of him against her.

He slides fingers into her pants, flicks the button open and runs a fingernail along the line of her panties before he pulls back and fixes her with a look - and he's beautiful, her partner, wearing the remnants of his shirt like a shipwrecked sailor.

There's no talk between them, just the look, and they each begin to undress, their hands desperate and slippery and clumsy, her tank top and bra landing over a chair, his pants kicked unceremoniously towards the bathroom, and he lunges for her, heat and want and desperation, lifts her bodily to brace against the wall, his hands grasping her ass and her injured thigh burning as she wraps her legs around him. He licks his way into her mouth and runs a hand up to cup her breast. She laughs at his feigned gentleness, and he growls into her mouth, the softness of his fingers turning dangerous as he pinches and twists her nipple and she tries in vain to catch her breath.

He's wicked and exquisite and cruel and beautiful as he captures her bottom lip and bites in time with another harsh twist and this time she does cry out because it hurts and it helps and she is made of want and pleasure and desire for _more_.

She's wet for him, has been since the ride here when he leaned in and whispered, in the middle of the crowded mid-afternoon subway, all the filthy things he wanted to do to her body, all the places he wanted to put his mouth, the different ways he wanted her to come undone for him. His passion for her is exhausting, it's exhilarating, it's still not enough; it is sharp bites and bruises on her wrists and a gentle, teasing caress of her thigh in meetings when Coulson is distracted and a ferocious fuck against the wall when they come out of things and they're both alive.

(And she likes to think she gives as good as she gets, and Clint is a visual creature - she's made him hard with a dress, driven him crazy with a hint of skin, made him shudder and moan by tying him down and making him watch her bring herself off with her fingers)

But now is not about _want_ , now is about _take_ and _get_ and _have_ and he doesn't bother with preamble, just reaches between them and guides himself into her slick heat with a precision born of the tens of hundreds of times they've done this.

He slams her against the wall again, and this is what's so good about him, the way he can be brutal with her, not afraid that she's going to break because he's seen her take apart men three times his size, knows that the bruises she'll sport in the morning, the slight ache she'll feel, will be nothing compared to what she's given them, chips of bone trapped under skin.

She needs this, she craves it, to feel small and cared for in a way she never was and will never be. She trusts him, the dangerously innocent trust they shouldn't feel but they both do, pooling between them. He is safe and he is reckless with her; he's going to be the one who puts her back together next time she falls apart, so she gives herself over to him and only to him.

He fucks her, hard and fast, every snap of his hips driving her into the wall, and she grinds down on him as best she can with no leverage but him, leans up to nip at the skin below his ear, which is soft and edible and smells of _Clint_.

He clutches her so hard he's leaving fingerprint bruises and she covets every one of them, wants them like she wants to fight, to kill, to win. They lock eyes and he has a troublesome look in his, the kind of look he gets when he's about to pull the rug out from under her, and he does, hands returning to her ass to pull her close, to drag her away from the wall. She clings to keep him in her, can't imagine not being fucked, can't imagine that sense of loss, but he slips out as he turns and bends to deposit her on the bed.

She smirks and thinks that if this turns from sex to making love, she might as well go make time with the shower nozzle, but before she can even finish the thought, he's got her hips captured again and he's moving her up the bed until she's got her head on the pillows and he can loom over her, take in the slight greenish beginnings of marks he's sucked onto her breasts, pushed onto her hips. He leans down to suck another mark on her collarbone, his free hand tangling with hers and she's lost in sensation, the feeling of being so slightly restrained while he has her.

"You gonna be good for me?" he growls, and she's never been good for anyone in her life, not even once, so she twists her wrist and breaks his grasp, moving her hands to grip at his back before she presses her nails into his skin, draws fresh red trails along the currently unmarked canvas she calls her own.

He hisses and ruts against her thigh, because he likes the pain just like she does, likes seeing his blood under her nails almost as much as he likes the taste of her on his tongue. She takes advantage of it, the moment of distraction, to wrap her legs around his waist and, with a twist and a thrust, she flips him onto his back and follows the movement so she's on top of him, straddling his hips.

He grins up at her and he just looks _edible_. Like the kind of man who, if he were anyone else, she would destroy with the swell of her breasts and the soft sigh of her breath. But he is Clint, no one else but Clint, and the idea of destroying him is too much like the idea of destroying herself for her to be comfortable with it. Instead she chooses to build something, rises up on her knees and reaches between them to guide his cock as she sinks onto it, slow and agonizing and sweet like fingers stained red from blood or strawberries or cold.

He throws back his head and arches his back as she drags out the moment of penetration, and she has brought lesser men to their fall this way, lowered their defenses until they can't help but give her everything she wants before she does them in. With him she just watches the gorgeous body stretched beneath her, taught like his own bow and she's the arrow, nocked and ready for his use.

She rolls her hips once he's inside her, and he groans, leans up and pulls her down into a kiss that's more like a savage bite, and she comes away tasting blood.

"You'll pay for that," she whispers as she mouths kisses along his jawline and nips at his earlobe. He grins ferally when she pulls back, wild and untamed, and if it was a movie he would say something like _Oh, I hope so_ but instead the challenge is in his eyes and his mouth as she moves her hips again and he thrusts up in time for her to lay one sharp fingernail on his breastbone.

She imagines herself made of knives, deadly and sharp, drawing a scarlet line down his torso to open him up and eat him alive like her namesake. But while she is sharp and she is deadly, her nails are sensible, so the mark she digs, sternum to naval, is nothing more than a scratch, a pinkish trail that implies her signature without promising a scar. She flicks one of his nipples with her thumb and then pinches it, smiling as she watches the blush of blood flowing to the area. She surveys his face, the way he opens his mouth to groan into the pain, and she starts drawing lines on his torso with her nails again, timing each swipe to correspond to every ferocious meeting of their bodies, and he groans and pants and shudders for her as his skin begins to show the paths she's created, the little trails that mark her progress through his pleasure. He surrenders to her, lets her take the lead and take his body, and she aches to do the same for him, wants to give herself, but she doesn't know how to do it the way he does, doesn't know how to put self aside and just feel, so instead she writes sonnets of fucking in her head and enjoys his capitulation.

He has his hands on her again, his hands everywhere, pulling and pinching and taking and it's overwhelming. All she can do is ride the moment, ride _Clint_ , because she feels her orgasm coming, and he slips his hand between them to thumb at her clit. She lays another scratch down his torso, and this time the skin breaks, and little beads of red appear. She leans in to lick at them, to savor the copper taste of his life, and in doing so the angle shifts just enough that he's hitting her just right, every thrust of their bodies together making her skin prickle and her belly tighten. It's a moment of bliss before she feels herself break in half, a wave of pleasure surging through her and a muffled cry of bliss dropping lightly from her lips.

He grabs her hips roughly as she recovers, takes over the thrust and roll of their bodies, desperate for his own release and as the pace begins to stutter, she smiles cruelly and resists the pull of his hands, sits up on her knees so he's almost out of her, so they're almost separate but not. She gazes down at him with half-hooded eyes, sated from her own orgasm, as he whines and begs and his fingers scrabble at the bruises on her hips.

"You want me?" she asks, and he pants his need, desperate and sincere, his eyes glazed and pupils blown, so she slips off him and moves down the bed, settling between his thighs. She leans in to lick up the length of his cock before sinking her mouth down around it, relishing in their tastes mingled together, salty and sweet and _human_. She allows her teeth to scrape his skin just a little, and he hisses and fists a hand in her hair, which makes her smile because she relishes the tense burn of her scalp. He props himself up on his elbow to watch her as she sucks his cock, and she knows she's getting to him by the filth he lets spill from his lips, a veritable litany of "yeah, you like that" and "want you choking on it" and "gonna fuck your face, my Natasha, gonna come down your throat."

It's promises, she knows, not threats, because she wouldn't be with him if it were threats. He tightens his grip on her hair as she pulls back to tease, tongue and the blunt threat of teeth on the head of his cock. She wraps a hand securely around the base of his dick, so that when he starts to control the situation, he won't hurt her any more than she wants to be hurt. They make a moment of eye contact, and she sees too much in his face, sees a frightening amount of affection, of vulnerability, and it's more than she can take from him; she screws her eyes shut to avoid the onslaught.

He starts to move her head, then, jerking her up and down by the hair, and she lets him set a punishing pace, lets him fuck her face savagely, because he _needs_ her, and she needs to be needed.

The pace stutters again, and this time she lets it, lets him thrust up and hold her down, as he empties himself into her mouth, letting out little more than a grunt. She's used to be amazed at how quiet they were during sex, but she thinks it makes sense, for a sniper and a spy. They're people who have to stay still and unnoticed and trained themselves to noiselessness long before they met each other.

She doesn't swallow, mostly because she knows what he wants, and when he opens his eyes again, she parts her lips to show him the inside of her mouth, the cum he left there. His eyes grow and she swallows then, when he's seen it, and parts her lips again so he knows what she’s done. He smiles, pulls her mouth to meet his in a brusing kiss, his tongue chasing the last of his taste.

She crawls up next to him, and he presses a kiss to her forehead, sweet and tender, before they both turn onto their sides. They're used to sleeping back-to-back, they've done it too many nights in the field to sleep any other way. Her hand gropes under the pillow for her knife, the one she keeps there, and knows he similarly has a hand on a gun he keeps under his. Not that they've ever needed them in Bed Stuy, not that they couldn't take down a New York burglar without breaking a sweat, but she's had a knife under her pillow for so long that she must have, at some point in the childhood she didn't have, conflated it with a teddy bear.

The broad expanse of his back presses against hers, the ridge of his spine more intimate than any lover's caress, and he turns off the light, as if either of them will sleep. She schools her thoughts to stillness, and closes her eyes.

* * *

When the sun rises, she climbs out of bed, takes a three minute shower before she slips on her panties and an old shirt of his, one that was black once, she thinks, and advertised the circus, but now the writing is gone and it's more gray than black and the fabric is soft like she's wearing nothing but baby powder. He finds her like that, sprawled on the couch, eating cereal from the box and poking through the movie reviews in the New York Times that she stole from his neighbor.

"When's the last time you saw a movie?" she asks, as he takes a handful of half-stale, store brand cheerios from the box she has beside her.

He shrugs. "No idea. Do you want to see one?"

She shakes her head. She has no need to escape a mundane life that she doesn't live with the tales of adventures she's had or romance she doesn't want. She was just curious, because it seemed like something a normal person would do, and sometimes she worries that Clint might be normal.

She reads the paper instead of talking, looks for any information about Barranquilla, about the deaths of cartel agents by American hands, but of course there's nothing. There's never anything about them in the papers.

He calls and checks in with HQ and they're both cleared for the day, graciously given 24 hours to recoup from Colombia before they're expected back in to kill and be killed again, and he then toasts a bagel and reads the sports section while she moves on to business and metro and thinks about how almost quaint it is to read news from paper, rather than a screen.

Eventually, he gets bored of watching her read, gets tired of the game he plays where he counts how many times she moves in an hour, and wanders back into his bedroom.

She hears the shower, followed by the all too familiar strains of his viola, the notes that aren't quite cello and aren't quite violin, but still manage to sink into her skin in a way she can't quantify.

She wonders if this is what people call being domestic, reading the news and playing the viola, and later she'll clean her guns, sharpen her knives, and spend a few hours doing stretches and forms, to keep herself in shape, and he'll fiddle with his bow and ignore the TV to watch her body bend, sweat beading on his brow until he can't anymore and he bends her over the couch for a quick, savage afternoon fuck.

It's probably not domesticity. Domesticity probably doesn't involve guns and knives and violas. It probably doesn't exist between trained killers. Especially when they put more bruises and cuts on each other than they get in the business of murder.

Still, when lunchtime comes she pulls on pants and troops down to the deli and gets herself a liverwurst sandwich, and him a tuna salad sub, which is something she might do if she were Mrs. Barton.

But she's not Mrs. Barton, never will be, doesn't actually _want_ to be. She's spent too long trying to work out who Natasha Romanoff is to go and change all that now with a new name.

They spend the early evening writing their report, discussing how things went wrong, a kind of post-mortem on something that isn't dead. She closes her eyes and sees it all, how there was an unreported tertiary alarm, how they scrambled to escape, and then the paths of bullets and the spray of blood and the two of them in the middle, back-to-back, cutting a path through the dangerous human jungle.

She doesn't feel like sex; her leg is still a little sore and not all of her bruises and bites have faded from her skin, so she takes her leave of him when the report is done and, still wearing his ancient shirt, she shrugs on her SHIELD jacket to leave.

He pins her against the door and kisses her fiercely on her way out, hands tangling in her hair, which she supposes is his way of asking her not to leave.

She'll never understand his need to say goodbye like that, the compulsion to make sure she knows he wants her to stay, and she shoves her hands into her pockets and walks to the subway.

The loft she chooses tonight is the one in SoHo, the one where the neighbors think she's an eccentric artist who keeps strange hours and don't ask too many questions - her favorite bolthole when she's in the city.

Dinner is takeout curry, eaten over the sink before she gets ready for bed, folding his shirt and laying it in the drawer she keeps, full of old cotton t-shirts she's purloined from his apartment. It's the one touch of sentimentality she allows. She inhales deeply and acknowledges that she loves that, no matter how many times she washes them, they all smell like Clint.

She crawls into her bed, naked as any other night, and wraps her hand around the knife under her pillow. She's watching her own back tonight. He might be, too, or maybe he went out to find some woman to fuck who will let him hold her close through the night. She doesn't mind either way.

When sleep comes, almost immediately, it’s the light sleep of a professional, the sleep of a woman alone. She hears footsteps at 2am, but she knows the gait, and knows there's only one person who could get past her security without her knowing.

The footsteps stop for a moment, regarding her prone form, and she moves over in bed and smiles, relaxing her grip on her knife as the mattress sags next to her. It's not the first time he's come to her like this, in the dead of night. She knows what he wants.

"Hi," Clint breathes, dropping a kiss on her shoulder, and Natasha doesn't sigh in happiness, but she lets him see the upward quirk of her lips as his chest presses into her back.

"It's okay that I'm here?" he asks, his breath hot against her neck.

It is okay, it's more than okay, but she doesn't know how to say that, doesn't know how to explain that his biomarkers don't set off the alarms and if he wants a key he can have one, that he can buzz himself in rather than scaling the fire escape. She doesn't know how to open the door and roll out the welcome mat, or whatever you roll out for people like them, so she answers by rolling onto her side and reaching to find his left hand.

She presses a kiss to his fingers, right against the callouses he's built there from years of firing a bow, and he turns the motion into a caress, his fingertips brushing across her cheek.

Natasha rolls back onto her side without another word. She lies there and listens to his breathing, lets the steady rhythm of his body lull her into a relaxed state, her fingers barely brushing the hilt of her knife. She is comforted by the heft and heat of his body against hers, the familiarity and ease of the way they feel together in her bed. She doesn't worry about what that might mean about him and her, about _them_ , if only because it's late and she's tired and tomorrow she'll be back to dodging bullets and killing men, so she might as well take this evening for what it is, and let her partner share her bed without expectation.

She names it solace, and she chooses not to question it.


End file.
